FY 2012 Ridership by Station

Gilbert B Norman wrote:Mr. Stolberg, not sure where you stand on this issue, if in fact anywhere at all, your material presented in its graphic format will certainly provide "fuel" for any party that holds the existing routing should be continued.

While some of the strong Albuquerque ridership would be retained even with a bus connection through Belen, much would be lost. What would make for a great "comparo" would be Sunset ridership through Phoenix vs. that in a comparable period through Maricopa. Additikonally, the Raton ridership cannot be overlooked. Boy Scouts could possibly become future riders - riders that count on the Corridor services that represent what passenger railroading is all about. As I've noted at other topics, my railroad industry experience within management suggested that Scouting was a "ticket to have punched' on the way out of the cubicles and on to "mahogany row".

Naperville, Mendota and Princeton are all served by the Quincy trains and the CZ, as well as the Chief. Although all three have total ridership of over 20,000 (~55 on/offs per day), I'm pretty sure that none of them produce 20,000 for the Chief alone. Not sure how the ridership at Galesburg (107,000 annual ridership)breaks down-maybe it produces 20,000 for the Chief. I do assume that Kansas City (161,000 between the River Runners and the Chief) does produce 20,000 riders. Thus, there are only three or four stops between Chicago and LA (Kansas City, Albuquerque, Flagstaff and maybe Galesburg) that produce as many as 20,000, and Albuquerque could be the only one to break 50,000. I'd bet that Wichita, Amarillo and any other intermediate stops (even if served in the middle of the night) would produce more traffic that the various stops between Newton and Albuquerque, but it would blow a big hole in the train's numbers if they lost a substantial fraction of the Albuquerque traffic.

Rerouting the Chief to the transcontinental doesn't"t necessarily mean losing Alberqueque. NMDOT, operator of the Railrunner, will keep the tracks between Belen and Alberqueque open. Phoenix was lost on the Sunset Limted because no one wanted to keep the tracks open.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:Mr. Stolberg, not sure where you stand on this issue, if in fact anywhere at all, your material presented in its graphic format will certainly provide "fuel" for any party that holds the existing routing should be continued.

While some of the strong Albuquerque ridership would be retained even with a bus connection through Belen, much would be lost. What would make for a great "comparo" would be Sunset ridership through Phoenix vs. that in a comparable period through Maricopa.

NARP provides some great analysis of the current Chief route at http://www.narprail.org/news/narp-blog/ ... -one-train . As for my position on the Raton Pass vs. Amarillo choice, I think that Amtrak ought to look at the data and clearly advocate for one or the other. Until now, Amtrak has taken a hands-off approach and said that it's up to the states and the Congress to decide. Ultimately, it does fall into their hands to come up with the funding, but Amtrak ought to be more proactive and less reactive. Perhaps now that Doug Varn has been named to the new position of General Manager, Long Distance Services, the matter and many other long-distance issues will finally get some attention.
http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/220/535/Amt ... 12-105.pdf

However, Mr, Norman's mention of Phoenix is particularly instructive. Here is the chart for the stations of the Sunset Limited between San Antonio and Los Angeles.


Notice that the number of passengers boarding and alighting at Maricopa (the nearest station to Phoenix) is about half that of Tucson. This is despite the fact that the Phoenix area has more than four times as many people as the Tucson area. This suggests that 7 out of 8 potential passengers from Phoenix aren't taking Amtrak because of the remote location of the station.

Slightly OT, but it is also interesting to look at the revenue per station in addition to ridership. In this case, the number in parentheses is the FY12 ridership rank:

1. New York $862,934,610 (1)
2. Washington $499,859,817 (2)
3. Philadelphia $265,190,480 (3)
4. Chicago $208,128,852 (4)
5. Boston South Station $129,185,930 (6)
6. Baltimore $80,727,793 (8)
7. Newark $77,188,136 (14)
8. Lorton $72,518,200 (43)
9. Sanford $72,518,200 (44)
10. Los Angeles $67,717,288 (5)
11. Wilmington $59,244,168 (11)
12. BWI $54,489,193 (13)
13. Route 128 $48,413,456 (27)
14. Seattle $47,710,658 (15)
15. Boston Back Bay $46,621,003 (22)
16. Providence $46,551,724 (16)
17. New Haven $41,875,958 (10)
18. Stamford $41,382,260 (34)
19. Metropark $39,391,802 (33)
20. Portland $38,957,496 (17)
21. Albany-Rensselaer New York $36,915,495 (9)
22. Sacramento $33,688,458 (7)
23. Trenton $31,091,671 (30)
24. Emeryville $27,021,071 (19)
25. Richmond $21,956,327 (37)

The stations with the biggest jumps are the Auto Train stations, for obvious reasons. Beyond that, this list highlights the importance of the "Beltway" stations (Route 128, Metropark, BWI) in terms of revenue. And most importantly, almost half of all Amtrak passenger revenues can be attributed to passengers boarding or alighting at New York Penn.

Nice to see Baltimore Penn top 1,000,000. BWI's ridership is amazing. No wonder it's the only suburban station serviced by the Acela Express. I can't wait to see what the numbers look like when they expand and add additional platforms.

What is the obvious reason for the auto train stations jump ? . i'm missing it .

All of the Auto Train passengers travel from endpoint to endpoint, so average revenue per passenger is very high. It isn't watered down by lots of passengers taking short trips, as is the case with Los Angeles. The Auto Train stations have the highest revenue per passenger by a wide margin.

Got it thanks .for some reason I was thinking it was a year to year increase .

State fact sheets are now posted.
http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentSe ... 6041980432

I am curious to know why Pittsfield ME is the recipient of a lot of the Amtrak funds; fuel?

I like how there isn't a fact sheet for the 3 Canadian provinces Amtrak serves too.

AgentSkelly wrote:I like how there isn't a fact sheet for the 3 Canadian provinces Amtrak serves too.

There is information on Montreal, St. Lambert and Vancouver at the Great American Stations site. As for Toronto and the other Ontario stations, they are, as I understand it, technically not Amtrak stops. The Maple Leaf is considered a VIA train while on the Canadian side of the border. Not sure if that will change with the recent VIA retrenchment.

I'll post a few more graphs starting with this one for the eastern portion of the Sunset Limited route (New Orleans and San Antonio not shown).

Again betraying my North Carolinian-ness, but I'm struck that the top 2 cities in North Carolina fall in the range of the top 5 of any state except California. Charlotte has also overtaken Raleigh as the number 1 ridership station in NC. With less crappy stations, certainly both Charlotte and Raleigh would do even better.

orulz wrote:Again betraying my North Carolinian-ness, but I'm struck that the top 2 cities in North Carolina fall in the range of the top 5 of any state except California. Charlotte has also overtaken Raleigh as the number 1 ridership station in NC. With less crappy stations, certainly both Charlotte and Raleigh would do even better.

Not to burst your bubble, but I suspect it's somewhat of a statistical anomaly. Most states aren't going to have more than 4-5 "large cities" and the largest cities are the most likely to be served by Amtrak.